Lexicography
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Guilty by definition
£16.99Guilty by definition
When an anonymous letter is delivered to the Clarendon English Dictionary, it puzzles the team of lexicographers working there. It soon becomes clear that this is not the usual eccentric enquiry. The letter hints at secrets, lies, and a particular year. For Martha Thornhill, the new Senior Editor, the date can mean only one thing: the summer her brilliant, beautiful older sister Charlie went missing. After a decade spent living abroad, Martha has returned to her father, her home, and the city whose institutions have defined her family. But the ghosts she had thought to be at rest seem to have been waiting for her to return. When more letters arrive and the team pull apart the clues within them, the questions become more insistent and troubling.
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Interesting stories about curious words
£12.99Interesting stories about curious words
Susie Dent, Britain’s cleverest lexicographer, linguistic expert and much-loved national treasure, explores all the very best red herrings, cock and bull stories, white elephants and nine-day wonders in the English language. There are enough stories to furnish a hundred conversations in a wonderful collection for everyone who loves words.
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The dictionary people
£10.99The dictionary people
What do three murderers, Karl Marx’s daughter and a vegetarian vicar have in common? They all helped create the ‘Oxford English Dictionary’. The ‘Oxford English Dictionary’ has long been associated with elite institutions and Victorian men; its longest-serving editor, James Murray, devoted 36 years to the project, as far as the letter T. But the Dictionary didn’t just belong to the experts; it relied on contributions from members of the public. By the time it was finished in 1928 its 414,825 entries had been crowdsourced from a surprising and diverse group of people, from archaeologists and astronomers to murderers, naturists, novelists, pornographers, queer couples, suffragists, vicars, and vegetarians. Lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie dives deep into previously untapped archives to tell a people’s history of the OED.
£10.99